The First Teacher

Dyuyshen (Bolot Beyshenaliev), a young Red Army veteran in 1923, rides into the mountains of Kyrgyzstan to open the region's first school. The village elders forbid their children to attend, and he sets up in a ruined stable with Lenin's words and a handful of reluctant pupils. Andrei Konchalovsky, in his first feature, lets Dyuyshen's feeling for his student Altynai (Natalya Arinbasarova) grow in glances neither is free to answer.